


Grave Decisions

by Paraprosdokia (ChangeableConsistency)



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon compliant through civil war I, Clint Barton & Kate Bishop Friendship, Feels, Gen, Minor Character Death, POV First Person, Talking about death and killing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23845564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangeableConsistency/pseuds/Paraprosdokia
Summary: This is a little experimental.I like to think of this as a flashback/clip show comic being narrated by Clint, and then a follow up issue of Kate and Clint target shooting in his apartment from Kate’s POV.I think it works, let me know in the comments what you think.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Kate Bishop
Kudos: 3





	1. Part One: The Many Deaths of Clint Barton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe, if Clint can save just one more person it will bring him close enough to balancing the scales, that maybe it will make all of it have _meant_ something.
> 
> And maybe that person can be Kate.
> 
> God, please, let him save her just this once.

You asked me once, if I’ve ever killed anyone. You assumed I reacted the way I did because I hadn’t. Maybe you thought I couldn’t. Or at least wouldn’t. You’ve always been too quick to think the best of me. 

It was a side of me I’d hoped you’d never have to know. 

I mean, sure, there are plenty of people I couldn’t save. Far too many that didn’t _want_ to be saved. 

That’s not what we’re talking about. 

I was a kid the first time I thought I was responsible for someone’s death. 

I had prayed, endless nights of prayer, that something or someone would take my pa. I didn’t much care how, but I was six, and creative. 

Maybe it’d be a bar fight gone wrong, even though I knew from experience how good he was with his fists. But someday he would pick the wrong guy on the wrong day, be slowed by an even-for-him excessive amount of liquor, maybe someone with a gun or someone just meaner and tougher- there’s always someone meaner and tougher. 

Remember that, Katie-Kate. There is _always_ someone meaner and tougher. 

But the scenario that seemed more likely was a simple car crash. That’s what I dreamed of most. 

Ma always swore that one day he would wrap the car around a lamppost and sure enough, one day he did. I just never pictured her in the car with him. 

I never felt guilty over him, but she deserved better. Or maybe I feel guilty because sometimes… Sometimes? I wished her dead, too. 

For letting him hit her. 

Or Barney. 

Never for me; decades gone and part of me still thinks some part of me deserved it. 

From the moment I could talk I’ve had a smart mouth; and I learned early on that it’s easier to take a beating if you provoke it, at least that way you have some measure of control, if nothing else you know when it’s coming— if not how bad. 

Fifteen years later I was deep into a life of crime with Carson’s Carnival of Wonders. Jacques and Trick kept me on lookout while the crew grabbed jewelry or cash or whatever from townies too rich to miss it. 

At least that’s what I pretended to believe. And “hardened” criminal that I was, I convinced myself it was okay, that we never crossed the line. Jacques planned the jobs so that we only hit empty mansions, or at least what seemed like mansions to me at the time. 

Bein’ friends with Tony Stark gives you a whole new appreciation of the word “rich”.

I would have probably kept on believing it if I hadn’t caught Jacques embezzling from Carson’s. I had been looking for Eden, my (first) girlfriend and found her in bed with Jacques, counting the money they had been skimming from the heists as well as ticket sales. A good way for both of them to end up dead, or worse. 

I’m still not sure if I felt more devastated by Eden sleeping with Jacques, betrayed by Jacques stealing from family, or terrified of what Carson would do when I told her. 

I never got to find out.

Jacques saw me see them and I ran, like I always do when I get too scared or confused to know what to do. I thought I could keep away from him up on the high wire, he didn’t have the balance to follow me and I figured I could talk some sense into him or at least stall him until someone else showed up. 

At first I was relieved to see Trick and I called out to him to get Carson. 

I hadn’t counted on him being in on it. 

My yell let him pinpoint my location in the shadows of the big top and he shot the wire, neatly severing it with one of his trick arrows. I fell three stories, no net. Broke both my legs (one in two places), my hip (for the first time), half a dozen ribs (already bruised from the daily “sparring” that was supposed to keep me in shape but always felt like an excuse for them to beat on me) and (most terrifying of all) my draw arm. 

None of that hurt as much as Barney standing over me, cursing me out for being a punk coward, for turning my back on not just our adopted family but on him. He broke my other arm at Trick’s order, a parting gift and a warning that no matter how tough or mean I thought I’d become I would never be as mean or as tough as them. 

See what I mean? 

There’s always someone meaner and tougher. 

Scared as I was, the guilt I felt at just the thought of turning them in them couldn’t outweigh the guilt at what we had been doing; of what I had been a part of. Sitting in the hospital without a bad penny to my name and truly alone for the first time in my life I felt like I had to do the right thing. 

Pfft. Right thing. Yeah, right. 

The fuzz didn’t care about the embezzlement, but those jobs we had been doing; like the job we had done that night— I swear to God, Kate, if I had known, if I had even suspected I wouldn’t have gotten in so deep, family or no. 

All those houses we hit? I had been so sure they were empty, that no one ever got hurt; we’d been leaving a string of body’s behind us like Christmas lights, one after another. 

Younger than you are now and accessory to more murders than I could count. 

No. That’s a lie and I promised I’d never lie to you. 

I remember every face. 

Every name. 

In the end I was “lucky”; testifying bought me off with time served and most of that was in traction. 

My girlfriend, though I guess at that point ex-girlfriend would be more accurate; boy, do I know how to pick them... 

Anyways, Eden used to help them get into the houses; she’d squeeze and bend through smaller openings and then open the locks from the other side. 

I guess I have a type. 

The law caught up to her first, the rest of the crew willing to feed her to the wolves; though eventually every crook at Carson’s would go down. She spent a dime in Michigan’s Club Fed for grand larceny and accessory to murder. She never really forgave me, but then I’ve never really forgiven her. 

I met her when she got out, gave her some cash and a ride (mind out of the gutter, Hawkeye) guilt weighing heavily on me. Not just for what had happened ten years before, but for still judging her for what had happened then when I had become a killer myself. 

A couple weeks before she got out I murdered Grigori Andreivitch, aka Firefox. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The first person I actually killed was Elihas Starr, the original Egghead. The man responsible for killing Barney. Though Barney ended up being not so dead. Eggsy came back, too, but at the time he was a doorstop and I’m the one that killed him. 

Janet always tried to tell me it wasn’t my fault, that I couldn’t have known that his gun would explode like that after I lodged an arrow in the barrel. That he had killed my brother, almost killed Hank- nearly killed all of us, really. 

But a man was dead, and not by wishing, or by accessory, but by direct action. 

After that I was twice as careful about the shots I took, not just thinking about how to make the shot or what my target was, but what would happen after, what type of collateral damage there might be. 

Firefox was years later. 

Long story short, Tasha had killed a sort of friend who turned out to be a war criminal who was bad at keeping secrets (like I said, I know how to pick ‘em); I couldn’t let it lie, I needed to know why. I ended up at an abandoned refinery/missile silo outside of Omsk. 

Andreivitch was going to kill me and Tash, but I’m not sure I would have made the same call if that’s all there was to it. No, the reason I had to stop him, the reason I had to put him down was that if he took out the two of us he would have enough Sarin gas to take out a major population center. It was the choice between one death and millions. 

Maybe if both my arms had been working, maybe there would have been another shot. A better shot. One that would let us take him in without risking all those lives. 

Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. 

That’s not what haunts me the most though. What haunts me the most is how easy it ended up being. Not the shot, impossible shots are our bread and butter. But the murder. Taking a life on purpose. I’d spent so long fighting it and when it finally became inevitable it was easy as breathing. 

Tasha had said, “Sometimes killing isn’t murder, but not killing could be.”

It terrified me in the moment; I’m not sure what I would have done if I had known how it would follow me the rest of my life. 

She’s wrong, you know. Murder is murder, even if it saves lives. It sticks to you, Katie, and you never really wash it off. 

I’ve forgiven Natasha for a lot of things over the years, but that one still hurts. 

A couple years later, I died for the first time. 

I mean _died_ died. Really died. Not technically dead or whatever. 

D E A D. 

You know the story, Wanda lost her marbles big time, killed Lang with a zombie bomb, killed Vision while unleashing an army of Ultrons, killed me- or at least got me dead. 

There’s a reason I insist on quick release quivers; sure they’re fireproof, kind of have to be with as much ordinance we keep in ‘em, but they're no match for reality warped Kree laser beams. 

On fire and with what at the time was my last breath I used a Kree jet pack, still attached to its owner, to launch myself into their warship, taking out thousands more. 

I still remember what it felt like; the horror, the sorrow, the terror. 

All those lives burning as I burned down to my bones. It seems even more horrible knowing it hadn’t been real. Or maybe it was real. With Wanda’s power it could have been a figment of her imagination or she could have summoned them from the Kree homefleet. Or it could have been real but created whole cloth out of her madness. 

It hurts too much to think about. 

Of course the first time Wanda brought me back I didn’t remember any of that. In the twisted reality she had created I existed again, this time as an underground freedom fighter set against the global mutant empire. 

I sometimes wonder if she did it that way on purpose.

Re-creating me as a weapon against her. 

I wonder if she knew I would come for her. That version of me had no memories of being a killer, but she hadn’t changed my essential nature. Even if I hadn’t remembered the old reality, she set us up on opposite sides. She also created this mutant girl, Layla, who remembered everything from that reality and whose “gift” was making others remember too. 

I really wish I’d never met that little girl. 

Once I remembered I knew what I had to do, as much as it repulsed me. 

The Scarlet Witch had to die. 

It was the first time there was actual murder in my heart. Premeditated, cold blooded murder. 

Wanda couldn’t be allowed to continue unchecked; she was too powerful and the very nature of her mutation, being able to bend reality to her whim, left her with no grasp on reality as we knew it.

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to kill her- not that I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger, so to speak, but that I would get that far. I’ve met honest-to-God gods less powerful than Wanda Maximoff. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone _more_ powerful. 

But maybe if I wasn’t able to put her down I’d at least be able to wake her up. 

I had the shot, would have taken it- _had_ taken it; I felt the string as it rolled off my fingers, the release of tension, of potential energy converting to kinetic energy (What? I read books. I know some stuff about some stuff), but in the space between heartbeats I fractured into a million pieces of nothingness. 

I’ll tell you this much for free, dying never gets any easier. 

So. While I’m dead (again) somebody does something and Wanda sets the world mostly back to right. 

Mostly. 

Sometimes I wonder if I came back wrong that last time, that Wanda saw the killer in my eyes and that colored the “real” me, the me I am now; part of me is afraid that it’s something I’ve always been. 

One of the first things I did once the world was set back on its axis was hunt Wanda down. 

Looking for closure. 

Or revenge. 

And finding neither. I’m still not sure what I would have done if— but that’s another thing I don’t like thinking about too hard. 

Anywho, shortly after that is when I met you, and you stole my bow (twice) and my name. (Kidding, I’m kidding! (But also you totally did. Even if you did get Cap’s permission.)) 

Ronin felt like a new lease on life. I couldn’t forget what I had been, but I knew I couldn’t keep being Hawkeye. I told myself I was safer without a bow, that sticking to close combat weapons would help me stay in control. 

I was afraid that a dam had broken, a switch flipped. I was a killer now, what was to stop me from killing again?

And maybe things would have been better, but everything changed when the fire nation attacked. 

Or rather, the Skrulls. 

I spend a lot of time in what ifs. 

What if they never captured Bobbi; what if she had never told them about the miscarriage. What if I hadn’t been in the Savage Lands when the Skrull ship landed. 

A lot of what if’s. 

But she was captured and tortured and Skrull!Bobbi tried to use one of our most devastating memories to break me, and I broke. I broke hard, Katie.

By the time we got back to New York I was ready to kill every last one of the green skinned bastards. 

I really did lose count that day of how many people I killed. And while at the time I could only think of them as monsters, as alien invaders who had caused more damage than you can possibly imagine, they were still people.

Which brings us up to Osborn. 

What an asshole. 

Part of me still thinks- no, _knows_ , he deserves to die. Maybe if Barnes hadn’t been wearing Cap’s shield, maybe we could have taken him together. 

We had survived the Skrulls only to be subjugated by the futzing Green Goblin. 

By this point I had killed or been killed enough ways under enough circumstances that I knew, without a doubt, killing him would save lives. 

Norman Osborn had to die. 

It made me wonder, knowing what I know now, would I have been able to kill Wanda when we first met? Before I loved her?

I don’t think I ever want to know the answer. 

I guess it says something that I didn’t kill Carnage, or Bullseye— I could have and they’re both monsters in their own rights. Just not on the same scale. 

So I took my shot and I missed— I know, I know, I never miss. But I did. And I’m glad I did. Maybe it would have saved Asgard, maybe the Green Goblin's madness would have stopped infecting the world, but maybe it would have been worse. I could have made a martyr out of him at the cost of what was left of my soul. 

Sometimes. Sometimes, Katie? It feels like too much; when the only arrow left in your quiver is one you never thought you’d use. 

The Skrull Invasion broke me, and even though I had Bobbi back, I was still wounded. Half feral. Okay, maybe I’ve always been half feral. Maybe I was more than half feral and the relentlessness of Osborn’s regime wore down the thin barrier I had tried to put back up between being the guy that takes out the monsters and being the monster. 

After that I had to try twice as hard, be twice as diligent, twice as strong. 

I followed Bobbi to the WCA— the World Counter-terrorism Agency one, kind of like how she had followed me to the original West Coast Avengers all those years ago. It’s funny how these things always seem to circle around. 

So I’m playing spy games with my ex-wife/girlfriend and that darkness, that killer instinct, is still right there at the surface. 

I… Like I said, I’m not gonna lie. I did some… some things. Not murder- _almost_. Almost. But not that. It got dark. I got dark. Or it was tapping into the darkness that’s always been there. 

I dunno. I just knew I couldn’t stay. Not with the WCA and, more importantly, not with her. She was part of a cycle, and I had to break it. 

Something had to break. 

Even leaving… Leaving Bobbi and all that, I thought maybe I was done. You can only hit or be hit so often before there’s just nothing left, you know?

But Cap— No. _Steve._ Steve pulled me back. He came to me, not just as a leader, or a symbol, but as my friend. He reminded me of all the times I’d given someone else a second chance and that if I could give out that many second chances, maybe, _just maybe,_ I could let myself have one too. 

So this is it, Kate. This is _your_ chance to not need a second chance. Put down the bow. Come with me. We can find another way. 

You don’t have to do this. 

I know it feels like you do, but you don’t. 

If anyone knows, it’s me. 

Please, Kate.

Hawkeye. 

Learn from my mistakes. 

Please.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to work in CWII, but couldn’t get it to flow. Maybe next time.


	2. Part Two: The Death of Kate Bishop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate knew what she had to do now. She couldn’t let him keep hurting people. Letting people- no, not just letting, killing people. And she was the only one who could stop him. 
> 
> Father or not, Derek Bishop had to die.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what, Katie?”

“Don’t call me Katie. I should have listened. Before. I didn’t. Now I’m here. So. How do you do it? Not… Not the,” God, just say it Bishop, “The killing. The after.”

“Oh, Katie-Kate. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re saying sorry to me? I feel like- I don’t know what I feel like. It was… It was like you said. It was both the hardest  _ and _ the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Kate—”

“I don’t need a hug, damn it. I need to know what to do now. How do I live with this? With knowing this about myself? I thought I knew but I was wrong. I’m a big enough person to admit it. You were right, I was wrong. Enjoy it while you can, Hawkeye.”

“Hey- I’m always right, Hawkeye. Sometimes.”

…

“Still. How do you do it?”

“You take it one day at a time. You have to.”

“A day at a time? I come to you for help and you give me clichés?”

“Clichés are clichés because they’re true.”

“I—”

“It’s the only way to get out on the other side of this, Kate.”

“I get that, but—”

“It’s like shooting. You spend too much time thinking about your last arrow, or the next, and you're gonna miss the shot you’re taking.”

“Okay.”

“Sometimes you just gotta—”

“OKAY!”

“—Breathe through it.”

“I said, “Okay”.”

“Okay.”

“But. What… What about next time?”

“Oh, kiddo. Next time—  _ every  _ time, you’ll have to make the choice again. And it’s gonna get both harder and easier each time.”

“Maybe… Maybe that’s the way it should be.”

“Maybe you’re right, Hawkeye.”

“I’m always right Hawkeye. Sometimes.”

…

“I’ll take that hug now.”


End file.
